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t LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, t 



I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J 



^IDIDIE^ESS 



PlOlSr. JA.MES ^Sr, ^WJ^T.!^ 



OF NEW JERSEY, 



BEFORE THE 



MONTGOMERY COUiTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 



@©T@giK 4. 186®, 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. CHANDLER, PRINTER, 306 & 30S CHESTNUT STREET, [GIRARD BUILDING.] 

1860. 



c^b"^' 



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ADDRESS. 



Farmers of Montgomery — 

Aristomenes after his unsuccessful defence of Eina against the 
Lacedemonians, carried with him some sacred pledges, said by the 
Delphic oracle to contain the fate of Messena. Beneath this oracular 
response of the god was concealed the great and useful truth that 
the safety and prosperity of this warlike people never could be 
secured until they had beaten their swords into plowshares and 
their spears into pruning hooks, for these sacred pledges were 
nothing more than leaden plates on which were engraved the labors 
and services of the goddesses Ceres and Proserpine ; in a word, 
simple treatises upon the arts of Agriculture and Horticulture over 
which these deities were supposed to preside. The talismanic pro- 
perties of these leaden sheets consisted not in any divine power 
they possessed, but in the benefits to be conferred upon this warlike 
people by the abandonment of their fierce struggles and the sedu- 
lous and diligent cultivation of those arts, the secret of whose 
power lay hid within the folds of these leaden sheets. Thus early 
did even the sacred oracles of Greece surround with an importance 
commensurate with their dignity and value these noble arts, whose 
cultivators are this day all around me, and whose triumphs in the 



field, the garden and tbe homestead, have gladdened the eyes and 
made proud the hearts of the farmers of Montgomery ; and upon 
whose judicious and wholesome patronage the present prosperity of 
the old Keystone State so much depends, and her continued great- 
ness can alone be secured. 

But while Greece spoke through her oracles, and gave the stamp, 
"the stamp and signet of the god," to the importance of the culti- 
vation of these noble arts, Rome in the example of the noblest of 
her sons, gave high and practical exemplification of the importance 
she attached to the industrious pursuits of the tiller of the soil. 

Nothing is so familiarized to the mind of the school boy, or 
lingers longer in his memory, than the fact of her generals, states- 
men, dictators and emperors, tilling their own paternal acres, leaving 
them with reluctance for State service, and retiring to them with 
gladness. Visions come and go, of that prevailing plowman who, at 
the call of country, "left his plowshare in the furrow, hastened to 
the field, met and conquered the foe :" so that the slant rays of 
the very next sunset gilded his triumphal banners as he entered 
Rome ; and then before the rays of the next morning had empur- 
pled the earth, was driving his team afield "with such rapidity," 
says the Roman annalist, "by all the gods, that one might say 
he only hastened home to get his plowing done." 

We have, too, Cicero as authority for the fact "that couriers 
were first introduced by the high ofiicials," to run between the 
Capitol and their farms, that they might not leave them except on 
State occasions. 

Virgil in his Georgics describes all the rural economy of the age 
with a relish that is felt in every line. I may safely say that with 
scarcely an exception, in all matters of rural management, in all 
kinds of farming stock, sheep, cattle and horses, he would be pro- 
nounced by every farmer present, a most competent judge : while 
his rules for the cultivation of fields and gardens would serve for 
studies here, notwithstanding the difierence in American and Italian 
climate. But it is only in that celebrated passage commencing 

'' fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint, 
Agricolas/' 



in his second Georgic, that he appears to be carried away with 
enthusiasm in depicting the serene pleasures of a farmer's Ufe. 

" 0, happy if he knew his happy state, 
The swain who, free from business and debate, 
Receives his generous food from nature's hand, 
And just returns of cultivated land, 
While in his easy and secure retreat 
He leads a harmless life, and knows no cheat j 
With home-bred plenty he is always blest. 
While rural pleasures crown his happiness. 
Unvesed by quarrels, undisturbed by noise. 
The country king, his peaceful realm enjoys." 

The accomplished Cicero in his work upon the Delights of Old 
Age, seems as if he never could have done talking about the plea- 
sures of farming, and closes a most glowing description of its enjoy- 
ments, with this vigorous passage : " And what do these noble hus- 
bandmen reply when asked for what purpose they dig and plant ? 
Why, simply this — in obedience to the immortal gods, by whose 
bountiful providence we received these fields from our ancestors, 
and whose will it is that we should deliver them unimpaired and 
with improvement, to our posterity." 

Farmers of Montgomery — It is hardly necessary for me to incur 
the charge of pedantry, by alluding at greater length to the dignity 
and importance of the profession you pursue in the opinion of the 
ancients. I have but sketched for you in faint and meagre outline, 
the high vantage ground your profession obtained in ages long since 
sped, in order to make still more manifest to you that in this 
remarkable age of the world, surrounded by all the appliances that 
science has conferred upon labor, the farming profession lags behind, 
or follows with a limping foot, instead of being in the vanguard 
of them all. And the reason is that you, Virgil's "country kings," 
the independent yeomanry of the State, who call no man master, 
who own and till its broad and fertile acres, have closed your eyes 
to the immense influence, your intelligence, your lumbers, your 
social position, and your important interests would enable you to 
wield in the affairs of the State, if you would only resolve to 
exercise it in a proper manner. 



When you consider the immense importance and value of your 
profession to the present and future prosperity of your State, 
one would expect to find upon your statute book more legislative 
enactments intended to encourage and advance so important a State 
interest. 

This omission has mainly grown out of the indifierence and 
neglect of the class most injured by it. The past you cannot 
redeem, but the future is with you, the men of the plow, the men of 
toil, the landweJir of the State. 

You can, representing as you do, nearly eighty per cent, of the 
population, if you will only awake to your own interests, mould, 
shape and direct its future legislation as you please. 

You should send hereafter to your legislative halls, men who 
affiliate with you, men who drive the plow, and wield the scythe and 
delve the earth. Men who have an interest in the soil they till, 
upon whose clear common sense you can confide, whose patriotism 
has been tested, and whose honesty you know. 

United in action as in purpose throughout the State, with your 
numbers, your local influence, you have it in your power to send 
men to your legislative halls, who will build up permanently the 
agricultural interests of your State — open up the soil to more 
thorough geological research — establish agricultural schools in 
almost every congressional district, endowed with State patron- 
age — and promote by all honorable and judicious means the cultiva- 
tion of those sciences that have done so much for agriculture, by 
the continued expansion of its field of operation, and the wondrous 
increase of its means of usefulness. 

As far as regards encouragement to our farming interests, we are 
far behind continental Europe. In this country every interest seeks 
protection, clamors for it, and our political hustings are made the 
theatres upon which cunning pohticians play their parts as the paid 
and interested advocates of such interests, while the great agricul- 
tural interest is comparatively neglected. 

In monarcl^bl Prussia they boast of at least five Agricultural 
Colleges, whose object it is to instruct young farmers who have 
already a preparatory knowledge acquired at the primary agricul- 
tural schools, in the physical sciences as applied to agriculture, and 



in agriculture itself with its associated branches of industry. These 
academies are each provided with a chemical laboratory, a library, 
collections of natural history, and philosophy. To these institutions 
are attached nearly nine thousand acres of land, all under scientific 
cultivation. There they have established eighteen preparatory 
schools, where the first rudiments of agricultural science are taught 
to those who desire to prepare themselves for entrance into the five 
Agricultural Colleges. In France, there are numerous schools 
assisted by the State, where young persons can obtain instruction 
in agriculture both practical and theoretical. The principal institu- 
tion of this kind is at Grignon, where one of the old royal palaces, 
and the domain attached to it consisting of nearly two thousand 
acres of arable pasture, wood and marsh land, have been relin- 
quished by the State. 

Indeed, there is scarcely a country in Europe where the important 
art of agriculture is not sheltered and encouraged by State patron- 
age. And while I do not deny that our national government has 
done something in the right direction, it is high time that our State 
governments had done more. 

I know I may be met by that enemy of progress, the oft repeated 
objection, that encouragement of this nature is hostile to the spirit 
and genius of republican institutions, and should be left to the per- 
severance and energy of private enterprise. I have lived long 
enough to be entirely satisfied with the fallacy of this political pos- 
tulate. I have lived long enough to feel grieved at the tendency of 
our State governments, to become mere political machines, devoted 
to the business of advancing the interests of this or that partisan, 
or for turning outlaws for the benefit of private, or what is worse, 
electioneering capital. Now the great object of a Repubhcan 
Government I take to be : " The regulation of the public aifairs in 
accordance with the wishes of the people, and in conformity with 
the real interests of the State." I believe that theoretically the 
aim of all governments should be, the conservation of human rights, 
and the continued preservation of, and protection to ftie interests of 
the commonweal. Government should be the conservator of every 
thing tending to advance and improve humanity. It is " the min- 
ister of God to thee for good," or should be. And this divinity 



of government is nowhere made more manifest than in this prin- 
ciple, requiring it to stand up in advance of the people, directing 
them and legislating for them in whatever aifects their real interests 
as a whole people. It is the State's organic judgment and will, its 
eye and its hand to secure for the State both by its wisdom and its 
power, the highest weal of man. Governments are but instruments 
in the hands of man for human good, and when they become subver- 
sive of this end, it is high time to alter or abolish them. Upon you 
the farmers of Pennsylvania depends the correction of the evils that 
have grown up in your State legislation. Crafty politicians call 
you the bone and sinew of the land, and you will remain that and 
nothing more, if you continue blind to your own power and influ- 
ence in the State. 

When I think of your numbers in the land, your power in every 
township and district, I honestly believe, that by a concentration of 
action, your strength would be greater than all the industrial pur- 
suits combined. But now your power seems to be like the restrained 
and controlled influence of the elephant in the menagerie. The 
politicians use you and abuse you ; they pierce you with sharp goads, 
and they ride upon your trunks with impunity. Whereas, if you 
were but fully alive to the fact of your real power, how soon would 
you crush them at a bloW, and trample them under foot. 

I have seen enough to enable me to make the obserA^ation, and 
had experience enough of their dishonest machinations to give it 
some weight, that the injury done to a State by plotting politicians, 
can only be compared, to use Swift's words, "to the ravages of 
swine in well cultivated fields." While an honest farmer, who by 
skilful draining, manuring and planting, has increased the intrinsic 
value of an acre of land, is worth all the politicians that ever were 
spawned from the brain of faction. 

Why just look at it — pause for a moment and scan the nature of 
the political strife by which the country is convulsed with almost the 
throes of an earthquake, and is it not a most ludicrous re-enactment 
of those fierce struggles in Blefuscu, related in Gulliver's Travels, 
between the Big Endians and the Little Endians. Those who will 
break their eggs at the .big end, and those who prefer and will go to 
the stake rather than break their eggs at the little end. For really 



the questions at issue among the factions do not appear to me to be 
of much more graver moment. Which is the convenient end of this 
great slavery egg that has been laid in our day, seems difficult to 
determine, and hence the pother that is kept up on every side. The 
strife and struggle of Blefuscu behold revived in our day. 

Farmers of Montgomery — Once more have you gathered from 
every section of your county to keep your annual festival and 
jubilee. 

Greece for a thousand years summoned to her Olympian festivals, 
beneath the graceful porticoes and shady groves of Elis. all who 
bore the Grecian name. They gathered there from every kingdom 
under heaven — from the islands of the sea — from the colonies that 
her hands had planted — from war-like Macedonia, and from sacred 
Delphos, from rocky Doria, and flower crowned Ionia — to greet once 
more their ancient mother, and meet like loving children round the 
family altar to enkindle afresh the noblest feelings of the soul. The 
Grecian Olympiad was a common bond of allegiance and re-union. 
While ostensibly it was but an exhibition for the display of physical 
vigor in the numerous games that pleased the public eye, and nerved 
and stimulated the youthful ambition to excel, it had really a much 
more elevated object and meaning. It was in fact the grand central 
point, where philosophers, sophists, statesmen, poets and husband- 
men assembled, that they might compare observations, and devise 
the ways and means of facilitating intercourse, and difi"using useful 
knowledge, while one or more pronounced discourses upon the pro- 
gress of civilization and humanity. 

So here, and at your numerous Agricultural festivals throughout 
the State. Pennsylvania assembles all who wear the Pennsylvania 
name. They come up from every township and district, bearing 
proudly with them the rich products of their fields — the ingenious 
specimens of the skill and industry of the loved ones of their own 
homes and firesides — their choicest cattle, and the fairest of their 
flocks — together with those numerous agricultural implements that 
modern ingenuity has devised for easing the yoke of labor. They 
come from their rural homes to their delightful festivals to exchange 
greetings with their brethren — to talk over the results of the last 
year's farming — to compare notes about this or that mode of culture — 



10 

to examine critically this or that improved stock — and to admire on 
every side, the astonishing products, which a generous soil aided by 
experience and culture, has poured out in such rich abundance. 

Let me to-day in what remains of this discourse, imitate the cus- 
tom of the Grecian Olympiad, by speaking of the progress of hu- 
manity and civilization, and show in brief the contributions made 
by the stirring age in which we live to the improvement of the agri- 
cultural art. 

The age in which we live has been pre-eminently marked by the 
wonders that have been wrought in the subjugation of the material 
world to the uses and purposes of humanity, and its most startling 
intellectual advancement. 

And this great mind movement is characterized by its practical 
tendency. The age of the ancient school men is over, and the public 
of our day expect from its thinkers and experimentalists, not clever 
paradoxes or ingenious puzzles, but the best, the surest and the 
shortest method of grappling with obstinate realities. Philosophers 
have ceased to speculate in retirement upon unsubstantial air drawn 
theories. Science is no longer an abstraction floating above the 
heads of the multitude. It has descended to earth — it walks with 
men — it penetrates the bowels of the earth — it enters our workshops. 
It analyzes the soil upon our farms, and the chemical constituents of 
the atmosphere above them. It traces with faithful minuteness the 
organic elements that enter into the composition of our plants, and 
makes manifest how those elements are held together by a kind of 
balance of opposite attractions, and which remain united only so 
long as that balance is retained. It speeds the iron courser of the 
rail. It tramples upon the billows. It defies the tempest. It gives 
to man the sun-beam for a pencil, and the lightening for a messen- 
ger. It lends to man's feeble arm an irresistible might, before which 
mountains crumble into dust, the barriers of kingdoms are removed. 

What is there in the recorded dreams of Arabian fancy, more 
wonderful than the force and enduring power of steam agency. How 
stupendous its power, and yet how manageable ! A child may direct 
it. It would crush an army. A single touch puts in motion the 
gigantic ship that can bear upon its deck the population of the city, 
or stow within its hold the freightage of a nation's wealth. Un- 



11 

affected by time, place, circumstance or fatigue there stands this 
universal servant of man, ready to relieve him from all drudgery 
and to assist his limited ability in carrying out the intentions of his 
will. In "Webster's glowing words : " It seems to say to men, at 
least to artizans, leave off your manual labor, bestow but your skill 
and reason to the direction of my power : and I will bear the toil, 
with no muscle to grow weary, no nerve to relax, no breast to feel 
faintness." 

But even the subtle influences of caloric, which thus animate the 
inert waters with titanic might, fail to excite our astonishment to as 
great a degree as those marvels recently produced by electric 
agency. 

Look at those wires as they stretch along by your great rail-lines. 
They appear perfectly quiescent. The weary bird rests upon them, 
and clasps them in its tiny claws. Yet along that motionless thread 
and through that feeble grasp, there may be passing tidings of life 
or death, ruin or prosperity, intelligence of the fall of kings and 
thrones, of battles lost and won, of events that change the destinies 
of the world, plunging whole nations into mourning, or intoxicating 
them with joy. 

A thousand fathoms beneath the keel of the war ship, undisturbed 
by the tumult of the elements in which she reels and struggles, in 
the dark and silent abysms of ocean where uncouth monsters hide, 
where human vision has never penetrated, there shall lie the won- 
drous ligature connecting the minds of nations, conveying manifold 
contributions to the sum of human wisdom and experience : and from 
the humanizing operations of which man shall yet learn to still his 
mimic thunders, and aspire after higher and brighter glories than 
those won at Magenta and Solferino. The electric fire that glides 
along this ligature shall scorch away the differences of race and na- 
tion, when man shall cease to learn war any more. This globe of 
ours is yet to be transformed by this wondrous agency into one vast 
human head, these magic wires like interlacing nerves, universalizing 
and harmonizing every sensation and every thought. 

It was out of the passing whirl-wind came the mysterious voice 
that asked of suffering Job : " Canst thou send lightnings, that they 
may go and say unto thee here we are ?" The power denied to the 



12 

a^e in which the patriarch lived, has for some wise purpose of the 
Infinite been reserved for the men of this generation, who have not 
only found out the path of the lightning, and can send it on its hu- 
man mission; but, Prospero like, have caught in passing, the northern 
Ariels, those merry dancers of the skies, who light their torches in 
our northern zones, and compelled even these " tricksy sprites" to do 
their bidding. 

And in this great mind movement by which our age is peculiarly 
distinguished, evinced in the rapid development of the hitherto 
unknown laws of nature, and the successful application of those 
laws, so as to make them contribute to man's comfort and happiness, 
the Agriculturist has not been forgotten. 

Agriculture now has become a pursuit which to prosecute to its 
full capacity, the arts and the sciences of modern times must be 
made to bear upon and co-operate with it, so as to add something 
to its progression, or to apply beneficially the knowledge of its 
already established principles and practices. 

Science in descending from her high places in this age, has taken 
agricultural labor by the hand, that they may walk together over 
the earth's surface and through the fields, while they search out 
the causes of things. 

Geology in this wondrous age reveals to the intelligent husband- 
man that the solid earth whose surface he tills, and that bears upon 
its stalwart breast the cyclopean masonry of the granite and lime- 
stone mountains, was once held in aqueous solution, and its sub- 
stance as impressible as the sand from which the ocean wave has 
just retired. She points him to the delicate markings, the foot- 
prints and impressions of organic animal structures hardened in the 
solid rock, as proof of the once soluble condition of the earth. She 
builds up for him the great globe itself, by a regular succession and 
continuity of strata, each presenting its own particular organisms, 
establishing the important fact that there has been a systematic and 
progressive succession of life in the ancient world, and preserving 
as in some curious museum, the specimens of organic life that 
existed at each period of deposition, manifesting that God's power 
on the earth has not been limited to the two thousand years of 
man's existence. Geology counts the age of the earth not by celes- 



13 

tial cycles, but by an index found in the solid frame-work of the 
globe itself. It points to a long succession of monuments, each of 
which may have required myriads of years for its elaboration. It 
arranges them in chronological order, observes in them marks of 
skill and wisdom, finds within them the vast cemeteries of the suc- 
cessive inhabitants of the earth — tracing the changes backward 
through successive eras of development, until the time when the 
" earth was without form, and darkness rested upon the face of the 
deep." This brilliant science attests that man was the last of 
created beings upon this planet. Through centuries and ages of 
creative activity, there is not the faintest trace of his presence, 
his footsteps, or his handiwork. In all the pages of this stony 
volume wherever it has hitherto been unfolded, there is no reliable 
record of man. And yet how sublime the thought that here 
suggests itself of man's importance and of a Creator's love, when 
the truth leaps forth from such scientific revelation that all this crea- 
tive energy and intelligence were exerted only to prepare a fit habi- 
tation for the coming man. The flint of your mountains, the marl 
that fertilizes your fields and makes wave with golden harvests — 
the rich abounding treasures of your coal fields, are but evidences of 
that divine forecast which thus deposited the remains of animal and 
vegetable life, that by decomposition and transformation should be 
made to minister for all time, to the wants of the coming ruler who 
was "to have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the 
air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and everything that creepeth 
upon the face of the earth." This noble science which thus tells the 
interesting story of the earth's past career, marking its epochs by 
revolutions which have repeatedly submerged, elevated and dislo- 
cated its frame work, has in a remarkable degree made itself subser- 
vient to the great art of Agriculture. 

It shows this earth with its huge mass resting on its primary 
strata, where the granite and the gneiss, the limestone and the slate 
have their beds. It points to the transition period when tropical 
vegetation, under the influence of tropical heat, gave birth to the 
ancient Flora of the earth, rank and luxuriant, whose decay accu- 
mulated that vast amount of carbonaceous matter now ministering 
so much to the comfort and prosperity of man — those immense coal 



14 

deposits, out of whose subterranean treasure houses comes the sub- 
stance that enlivens your hearth-stones, prepares your food, furnishes 
light to your dwelling, and is fast becoming the essential agent of 
that mighty power of steam, upon which modern locomotion, the in- 
creasing value of the products of your farms and manufactures so 
much depends. 

And we may well pause here to admire that wise mercy which has 
thus provided so inexhaustible a field of fuel at the time it was most 
needed, and in the very localities it was most required. And yet it 
is no slight proof of the patience and majesty of the procession of 
the divine will, that it has only been within a comparatively short 
time that man has been enabled to understand the object of this 
great contrivance. Those huge cone-bearing trees, those rich and 
varied mosses, that flowerless and fruitless vegetation, so luxuriant 
and so immense, which, ages before the creation of man, covered so 
large a space of your own State. For what were they meant ? 
And those layers of black stone cropping out from the hill side in 
more modern times, what object have they ? But now the answer 
comes in the hum of thousands of steam engines, in the flash of 
thousands of forges, in the light round thousands of hearth-stones, 
and the whirr of myriads of spindles. 

With unerring certainty geology points the Agriculturist to that 
tertiary formation where the marine strata are deposited, to which 
the rivers, lakes, floods and seas of the ancient world contributed. 
Here you find the grand depositories where are laid up the fat and 
unctuous marls and green sand which have proved such efficient fer- 
tilizers of the soil in our alluvial districts. 

You come to the surface, to the soil you cultivate, and geological 
science shows you its derivation from the original primary rocks, 
which by convulsions, changes and repeated disintegrations, has been 
the better fitted for the purposes of tillage and cultivation. It 
teaches the Agriculturist how to divine the character of the upper 
soil from the rocks beneath it. In some places you meet with sand- 
stone, in other places lime-stone, in others slate or hardened clay 
and rock, hence your sandy soils, your clay and your calcareous 
soils. Thus the modern intelligent Agriculturist seeking a locality 
for settlement, by the aid of this useful science is now enabled to 



15 

say — ^by the geological structure of this section of country, here I 
shall have the more permanent productive soil, here I will be within 
the reach of more agricultural improvement. Here in addition to 
the riches of the surface, my descendants may hope to derive the 
means of wealth from the mineral riches beneath. 

But geology is not the only science that comes to teach the agri- 
culturist the nature of the various elementary constituents of bodies, 
and the laws regulating their combination in the inorganic and non- 
vital world ; while animal and vegetable physiology instruct him in 
the constituents of organic or vital beings. Chemistry discloses to 
him the existence of deleterious gases in the atmosphere, while 
vegetable physiology most beautifully demonstrates how the leaves 
of the plants are the lungs by which they breathe, and appropriate 
these deleterious gases which are retained by them, while oxygen 
so necessary to man's vitality is thrown off by them to purify and 
exhilerate the atmosphere. So thus by an arrangement, whose wis- 
dom is apparent, the vegetable and animal kingdom are made to 
contribute mutually to each other's support. Nay, they are essen- 
tial to each other's existence. Destroy the ^^n^al reign, and the 
vegetable will speedily perish for the want of its proper nutriment. 
Eradicate the vegetable cover of the earth, and the very air we 
breathe will lose that element by which life alone exists. 

Chemistry reveals to the intelligent agriculturist how certain 
elements of the inorganic world contain nitrogen, phosphorus, soda 
and lime ; while vegetable physiology beautifully makes manifest 
how the living organism of the plant, when such substances in the 
shape of natural or artificial manures are brought to its roots, 
through these vegetable mouths imbibes the liquid nourishment that 
the rains wash down, — nature, by her secret process, so combining 
them as to form stem, leaves and flowers. 

Vegetable physiology makes apparent to him that as the blood is 
to the life of man, so the sap in vegetables is the vital current, which 
circulating through their veins and arteries, is necessary for the 
maintenance and increase of their frames ; and as this nourishing 
fluid is being constantly consumed, chemistry analyzes it, and shows 
him what elements enter into its formation. It makes manifest how 
this vital fluid contains all the elements out of which the structure 



16 

of the plant is composed, while carbon, hydrogen and oxygen enter 
materially into its formation. Then vegetable physiology shows to 
a demonstration how certain plants derive all these gases from the 
atmosphere — their carbon from its carbonic acid — their hydrogen 
from its moisture — and their nitrogen from the gleaming lightning, 
that shedding its lucid glare during the passing thunder shower 
gives down this important element, which coming in contact with 
earth's substances, produces that vigor in vegetation which is the 
certain accompaniment of the summer shower, so that in fact the 
electric magazines of the skies coming in contact with earth's sub- 
stances are continually engaged in the manufacture of those nitrates 
of potash, of soda, or of lime, that form such important ingredients 
in your best manures. 

In fact the science of vegetable physiology to one who studies it 
aright, may be said to reveal the sublime and exalted mission of 
humanity. For though of the earth, earthy, it symbohzes in the 
immutable laws of vegetable life, the spiritual ordinance of that 
which is yet to be for man in the great hereafter. 

It in truth mak^^i^anifest 

" How creation's soul is thrivance from decay, 
And nature feeds on ruin ; the big earth 
Sumiiiers in rot, and harvests through the frost 
To fructify the world ; the mortal now 
Is pregnant with the spring flowers of to come, 
And death is seed time of eternity." 

It clearly reveals how the immutable laws of vegetable nature 
decrees that death shall proceed out of life, and life out of death ; 
that the living animal shall draw its vitality from the dead plant, 
and the living plant from the dead animal ; that decomposition must 
be but the commencement of recomposition, and putrifaction but the 
symbol of renewed production. The brave apostle to the Gentiles, 
preaches this beautiful truth. " But some will say, how are the dead 
raised up, and with what body do they come ? Thou fool ! That which 
thou so west is not quickened except it die ;" and how like a light from 
heaven it bursts upon the darkness of the tomb ; and how often it 
has comforted the stricken mourners, as with wildly beating hearts 



17 

they heard that fearful miserere of the last service of the church, 
"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." 

Man decays and ages move, and in the" long' course of centuries 
the very fibres and tissues of this mortal frame, the sinews that have 
toiled, and the brain that has thought, may reappear in the emerald 
leaf of the oak, or the painted wing of the insect. Decay is only 
apparent, no atom is lost, not a single molecule destroyed, and the 
very signs and tokens of dissolution are but parts of a gigantic sys- 
tem, wherein death is the very condition of life. It is therefore no 
paradox to say that life could not exist without death; vitality and 
decay, production and corruption, formation and destruction, are 
so intimately and mutually dependent, that their reciprocal and com- 
pensatory action alone maintains the equilibrium of our natural sys- 
tem and the essential conditions of our well being. 

And is not this too the great truth that history teaches in the 
progress of the political world? Has not the dissolution of old 
forms of government been but a preparation for new phases of 
humanity. Dynasties may die out, and forms of government be 
changed, but the great law of reconstruction INmm, is still apparent, 
and the ruins of States and Empires become like the falling of the 
leaves in autumn, manuring the soil, and preparing it for the growth 
of richer vegetation and more abundant harvests. 

Nor is this wondrous truth of reconstruction from decay the only 
marvel that reveals itself to the earnest student of vegetable phy- 
siology. Amongst the wondrous analogies disclosed by it in the 
animal and vegetable kingdom, none are more astonishing than that 
curious discovery of sexes in the higher order of plants — making 
manifest how by the impregnation of the germ in one sex, that germ 
is converted into a seed, and how that seed if placed in the ground, 
in a condition where it can have health and support, becomes the 
perfect plant. So that calm race, the flowers, all loveliness and 
tranquility, whose life is beauty, and whose breath is perfume, play 
no idle part in nature's workshop — for to them is in reality com- 
mitted the task of perpetuating not only vegetable, but animal life. 
Upon their active industry depends the life of every bird that soars 
in air, of the cattle on a thousand hills, of every insect crawling in 
2 



18 

the dust — aye, of the very life of man himself. As England's 
laureate poet asks : 

"Who is it that could live an hour 
If nature put not forth her power, 
About the opening of a flower." 

Look too at the beautiful revelation vegetable physiology gives us 
of the superintending love that watches over all things from the least 
to the greatest. See how kindly nature with a mother's instructive 
love and tenderness surrounds the germ before it is separated from 
the parent flower with nutritive matter, the starch, the gluten and 
albumen, which shall form its future food when the parent flower 
dies, the carpel splits, and the seed is free. And learn too nature's 
ingenuity, when you note the little wing-like expansions on the sides 
of the new born seed, that it may the more easily waft it to some 
distant place, where it is to lie feeding on its own stores, until 
exposed to warmth and moisture, and the oxygen of the air, it shall 
burst its seed coats, and commence its active existence. 

But the science of vegetable physiology stands not alone in the 
valuable contributions it has made to the art of the husbandman. 
Chemistry, as every intelligent farmer knows, has in a most remark- 
able degree adviiuced the agricultural interests of the world. 

As a science, it is of comparatively late origin ; and yet how diffi- 
cult it is to fully realize the extent to which in that short period it 
has contributed to the comfort, prosperity and luxury of the world. 

When in the latter part of the last century, the focus of Priestley's 
burning lens, evolved from the common red precipitate bubbles of 
gas, identical with that which supports life, who could have supposed, 
that by freeing one of the metals from its companion element, the 
composition of many of the most useful ores would have been 
detected, and a hint furnished, which was to bring the whole metal- 
lurgic art to a system of rigid and practical economy. Or who 
could have been presuming enough, when his nostrils first caught 
the suffocating odors produced by the German Chemist's operations 
on the acid of sea salt, to have then predicted that this discovery 
would introduce a total revolution in the manufacture of paper and 



19 

linen textures, and a vast variety of objects. Or when the chemists 
of the last century observed the discoloration and degradation which 
certain metallic salts underwent in the sunlight, who would have 
ventured the prediction, that the sun in our day should place a 
pencil in the hands of Daguerre and Talbot, that should make the 
highest efforts of the painter's skill, poor in the comparison? Or 
when the French philosopher, not half a century ago, perceived the 
disturbance of the magnetic needle produced by a neighboring gal- 
vanic current, who could have conceived that from this circumstance 
science would conjure up a spirit that would outstrip the fairy Oberon 
in "putting a girdle round the earth in forty minutes." 

But great indeed as are these contributions to the sum total of 
human comfort and prosperity, we very much doubt whether in 
practical everyday usefulness they have not been equalled by those 
which chemistry has made to agriculture, and that, too, within a 
recent period. 

It is within the memory of most of us, when the application of 
this science to Agriculture was first efficiently made. It was only 
the other day that Liebig made the first successful attempt to im- 
prove agricultural resources, when he suggested on theoretic grounds 
alone, the addition of sulphuric acid to bones, as a means of render- 
ing them when used, more soluble, so that the spongioles of the 
thirsty plant might the more easily appropriate the liquid nourish- 
ment. 

But the intelligent farmer of to-day who has learned through the 
development of this science great and useful truths, truths of which 
he never dreamed before, is ready to acknowledge his indebted- 
ness. He knows that with a knowledge of geology, vegetable 
physiology and chemistry, he is much better enabled to realize upon 
his farm the full advantages of its culture, from his knowledge of 
the soil, the organism of plants, and the nature of the food that will 
best perfect such organism. 

The farmer of one idea — the man who in this age despises book 
farming as he contemptuously styles it, is ever like the man with the 
muck rake in Pilgrim's Progress, looking downward, and never 
desiring to extend the range of his vision. He is as one who is con- 
tent to stick to the old Troy coach in preference to the many more 



20 

certain and expeditious modes of locomotion. Experience has done 
much, and will do more for the farmer. But experience after all, is 
but the dim glimpse of truth, like the religious faith men had before 
a revelation. Experience did much for the age in which old Cato 
the censor lived, and in his Agricultural treatise he very properly 
enjoins the young Roman farmer : " Beware of rashly contemning the 
usages adopted by others." That was good advice in the days of the 
stern old Roman, and it is good advice now. But he who relies 
upon experience alone in this age when the laws of science are 
unfolding truths that experience never revealed, will find himself 
going behind, and that pretty rapidly, too. Oh ! but methinks I 
hear one of these old fogies say — the world got along very well Avith- 
out farming many years ago ; and so they did for a time without 
breeches or buttons, and much longer without the printing press or 
the steam engine. 

As Henry Ward Beecher very pertinently says upon this subject : 
"a farmer never objects to receive political information from news- 
papers ; he is quite willing to learn the state of the market from 
newspapers, and as willing to gain religious notions from reading, and 
historical knowledge, and all sorts of information except that re- 
lating to his business. He will go over and hear a reading neighbor 
tell how he prepares his wheat lands, how he selects and puts in his 
seed, how he deals with his grounds in spring, in harvest, and after 
harvest; but if a neighbor should write it down very carefully and 
print it, then its all poison — its book farming." 

Farmers in this active age must use their heads as well as their 
hands, and must not content themselves with simply being as wise as 
their ancestors, trusting alone to experience, and despising all scien- 
tific information. If they do, the farming profession will find itself 
more and more in the back-ground every year, for every other pur- 
suit is availing itself of all the aids that science, assisted by expe- 
rience, can discover, and if Agriculture chooses to grope about in 
the dark with the farthing taper of experience, when she can avail 
herself of the Drummond lights of science, she is false to her own 
interests and to the age in which we live. 

Let me enumerate in brief — for time warns me that I must not 
trespass much longer on your attention — the benefits that have 



21 

resulted to Agriculture by the developments of chemistry. Those 
developments have taught the Agricultural world the value of sub- 
stances for manures which heretofore have been thrown aside as 
worthless. They have made manifest why plants grow upon a soil 
that is well manured, because such manure has added to the soil, with 
the aid of the atmosphere, the elements that enter into the structure 
of plants — nitrogen, phosphorus, soda, potash and magnesia. They 
have taught the Agriculturist that when the natural manures fail, 
artificial compounds may be resorted to, giving to the soil and the 
plant something in which the first was deficient and the latter was 
craving for its nourishment. 

Chemical analysis may perhaps show you that your soil is deficient 
in sulphur or in soda, but contains all the other substances required 
by wheat. Guided by this, you apply a top-dressing of sulphate of 
soda to your wheat, and the full grain in the ear almost bends to the 
earth with its own weight. You find that the land you are about to 
lay doAvn in grass is deficient in nitrogen — you top-dress it with a 
preparation of nitrate of soda, and a rich luxuriant crop greets the 
advent of your mowing machine. 

The intelligent husbandman who spreads lime upon his land 
through the revelations of Agricultural chemistry, is made aware 
that by this means he goes through the very process a chemist 
resorts to in his laboratory to analyze the soil — that is, he liberates 
the silica, the potash and the phosphates, which enable these sub- 
stances the better to mingle with the soil, and administer to the de- 
mands of vegetation. And he learns further, that by this liming 
process he has furnished no equivalent for that removed by the 
crops, and unless he restores to the soil what the lime has evolved, 
his pregnant liming will only serve to burn up and exhaust it. He 
learns perhaps what he never dreamed of before, that lime is not in 
the ordinary sense a manure, for manuring consists strictly in the 
restoration of that to the soil in which it is deficient. But lime is a 
robber, and the farmer who works slovenly, contenting himself with 
frequent liming, without compensation, will find that it is a spolia- 
tion system, leaving his soil ultimately poor indeed. 

Agricultural chemistry has further revealed to the Agriculturist 
that the drought when the earth is parched, and vegetation dwarfed 



22 

and withered by the heat, is only an affliction for the present, a 
blessing in disguise for the future, that the early and the later rain 
may perhaps produce at once abundant crops ; but still dry weather 
is needed to bring to the surface from the depths of the earth, food 
for the future harvest ; that as the drought continues, the water from 
the sub-soil keeps constantly bringing to the surface the salts of 
lime, of magnesia, and of potash, that it holds in solution. Thus 
you are taught to see in the drought, one of nature's ordinances for 
keeping up the fertility of the soil. 

The management and tilling of the soil has now become a 
branch of practical chemistry, which like the art of dyeing, or lead 
smelting may advance to a certain degree of perfection without the 
aid of pure science : but can only have its processes explained, and 
be led on to shorter, more simple, more economical and perfect pro- 
cesses by the aid of scientific principles. 

Nearly a century ago, a Scotch mother according to Sir Walter 
Scott, objected to her sons using on the farm what she called a new- 
fangled machine for dighting the grain from the chaff — thus impiously 
raising wind by human art, instead of soliciting it by prayers. We 
wonder what that good old Scottish woman would have exclaimed 
could she have been spared to our times, to witness the increasing 
triumphs of mind over matter, and the almost complete subjugation 
of the physical elements to an intellectual sovereign. Surely, if in 
any department man hath sought out many inventions, it has been 
in the department of Agriculture with your patent horse hoes, and 
with your steam ploughs, your centre draft ploughs for sand and 
for clay soils, your side hill and subsoil ploughs, your reaping, mow- 
ing and threshing machines, your revolving wheel and hay rakes, 
your patent sowing and planting machines, you have a mass of 
labor-saving machinery, that must excite the wonder of the farmer 
Avho tilled the land a quarter of a century ago. 

Such are the wonders of the remarkable age in which we live. 
Such the contributions made by science to Agriculture. Living then 
in this progressive age, it is hardly necessary for me to say, that it 
is the duty of all classes in such a noble State as Pennsylvania, to 
gain by every means in their power, all the benefits within their 
reach. We have been heaving to-day the log into the deep, and 



23 

measuring the rapidity of the current by which the world is borne 
along. You cannot stop it if you would, and you ought not if you 
could, nor can you stand idly by trusting to the strength of the an- 
cient moorings by which your vessel is made fast ; for against such 
a current the stoutest cables will give way, the strongest vessel drag 
her anchors. Your duty, and the duty of all of us, is to strive to 
turn in the best direction the current which is carrying us so rapidly 
forward. 

Farmers of Pennsylvania — Your lines have fallen indeed upon 
pleasant places. Yours is truly a goodly heritage. Like the 
"Children of the Promise," you have been brought into a good 
land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring 
out of valleys and hills, a land wherein thou canst eat bread without 
scarceness, thou canst not lack anything in it; a land whose stones 
are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig coal." And the 
same Almighty power which gave you this goodly land to possess it ; 
has blest the fruit of your land, your corn, and your wine, and your 
oil, and your flocks of sheep. 

It is a land with rich and verdant meadows smiling beneath its 
pleasant skies ; with grain fields ripening for harvests that fill to the 
full its groaning wains and bursting granaries, with orchards bending 
to the earth with their russet, brown and golden fruitage. It is the 
Keystone that locks together and holds firm in their places the 
springing extremities of the glorious Arch of our Union ; upon 
whose patriotic strength the confederacy has relied in times past, 
and which will not fail it in the future. 

Such, Pennsylvania farmers is the lot of your inheritance. It is 
your heritage. See to it, that you continue to own the fullness of 
your debt of grateful love by the faithful discharge of your high 
duties, to God, your Country, and the generations yet to come, that 
it may be to you — a heritage forever. 






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